Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has scored a $2 million advance for a book about how judges should not bring their personal feelings into their rulings.
The deal, first reported by Politico, is an “an eye-raising amount” for a Supreme Court justice, and it is most likely the biggest advance a member of the court has received since Clarence Thomas or Sandra Day O’Connor landed similar deals.
BARRETT WRITES FIRST MAJORITY OPINION, IN WILDLIFE PROTECTION CASE
Barrett, during her confirmation battle, received intense scrutiny for her personal beliefs, especially about her Catholicism and her personal opposition to abortion. Barrett, a member of the charismatic group People of Praise, served on the board of Trinity School at Greenlawn, a school that holds traditional views on marriage and sexuality.
In hearings, Senate Democrats accused Barrett of allowing her faith and opinions on abortion creep into her jurisprudence.
“I would suggest that we not pretend that we don’t know how this nominee views a woman’s right to choose, to make her own healthcare decisions,” Vice President Kamala Harris, at the time a senator from California, said in her opening comments on Barrett.
Barrett throughout the confirmation process maintained that she would not let her personal beliefs sway how she ruled. In her opening statement, Barrett emphasized that courts should never become activist bodies.
“The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people,” she said. “The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts should not try.”
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Barrett, when she was a clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman in 1998, co-wrote an article with John Garvey, who would later become the president of the Catholic University of America, arguing that Catholic judges “cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church’s moral teaching whenever the two diverge.” The two argued that Catholic judges should try to recuse themselves from death penalty cases.
Barrett first entered the public eye during her 2017 confirmation hearing for a seat on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, during which California Sen. Dianne Feinstein claimed that the “dogma lives loudly within you” with regard to her Catholic faith.
